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Members of the New Auburn High School team, along with adviser Andrew Lorenzen, far right second row, posed with their winning Toys on Task machine at the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest in this photo by UW-Stout. The New Auburn team won the national championship in Michigan on March 19.
For the Herald

The 42-step project that earned New Auburn High School the national championship in the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.

BRITTNEY WINIARCZYK | For the Herald

New Auburn wins Goldberg title for third time

Members of the New Auburn High School team, along with adviser Andrew Lorenzen, far right second row, posed with their winning Toys on Task machine at the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest in this photo by UW-Stout. The New Auburn team won the national championship in Michigan on March 19.
For the Herald

The 42-step project that earned New Auburn High School the national championship in the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.

BRITTNEY WINIARCZYK | For the Herald

It was a gamble that the 12-member New Auburn High School team
didn’t have to take. Two other high schools in the same situation
decided to play it safe and sit things out.

But with a national title possibly on the line, co-captains Everett
Sarauer and Dan Pitts decided go ahead with making a third run of
the team’s entry in the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.

Taking the risk and winning outweighed possibly losing, Pitts
said.

Forty-two steps later, New Auburn completed its third flawless run
with its “Toys on Task” machine.

“I think that impressed the judges,” Sarauer said.

It sure did. So much so that New Auburn won the national title for
a third time Saturday at Ferris State University in Big Rapids,
Mich.

The school also won back-to-back national titles in 2005 and
2006.

The Goldberg competition has students showcasing their engineering
skills by completing a simple task in a complicated way. The
competition is named after the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist,
whose funny designs were overly complex.

The machines the students design must contain a minimum of 20
steps.

New Auburn qualified for the national competition after winning
regionals at the University of Wisconsin-Stout on March 1.

The students raised $5,000 in donations in about two weeks to pay
for the trip to Michigan. Much of the costs for transportation were
picked up by a Chippewa County company that prefers to remain
anonymous.

In winning the national title, the 12-student New Auburn team
defeated 13 other teams from 10 states, including California,
Illinois, Georgia, Indiana, Nebraska, Michigan, Minnesota, New
York, Texas and Wisconsin.

Another Wisconsin high school, Kimberly, finished second and
Rockford, Mich., was third.

The national finals were tense, said Jim Skuban, New Auburn’s
technology and engineering teacher.

“You could hear a pin drop in there,” he said.

Skuban advised the national champs along with two student teachers
from UW-Stout, Andy Lorenzen and Kevin Deitsche, both graduates of
Colfax High School.

There was a buzz in the air, Deitsche said. Two giant LCD screens
captured the action. If there was a mistake that needed student
intervention, the crowd would murmur “ooh and ahh,” he said.

He praised the students for being very smart and coachable.

Sarauer said the students began making prototypes of competition
machines in their senior technology classes.

They wanted a “Toy Story” theme but figured Disney held the
copyright to that name, so they changed it to “Toys on Task.”

“We got stuck a few times,” he said during the machine’s
development. But things went quickly once the students found the
general direction they wanted to take.

As for the competition, he said: “Everyone had really good
machines.”

Pitts described nationals as being exciting and
nerve-racking.

“It was a lot of fun, though,” he said.

Pitts said the biggest perks of winning a national championship is
bragging rights.

(7) comments

Wish I could see it in action! Fantastic job kids (and advisors!)...I'm sure you all put in a lot of extra time and it paid off. So proud of you guys. There will be a next generation of engineers after all.

I taught there until recently retiring and I'll tell you those kids always put in a lot of hours on this contest every year. I'm very proud of them. Congratulations Nobbern. Also, the machine will probably be put on their website soon. There is a video of the 2009 machine at work there now. Go to www.newauburn.k12.wi.us. It's nice to have some positive news on the education front for a change.

Great job New Auburn! If any of these fine kids are going on to engineering school, may I make a suggestion, if you want to move back home after college: Mining Engineering! We'll need you in the Northern part of the County to help extract that 'white gold'.

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